[marta]

Okay... this may be a bit extreme. All the settings for IE, your cookies, favorites, temp folder, etc are in your user profile. A quick way to test to see if there is something coming from either a setting or something else might be to create a new user on your XP Pro system. There might be another way to do this by saving your old 'profile' and creating a new but I don't know off the top of my head. It might be easier to just create a new user and then log in as the new user and see if you have the same problem. The new user won't have things like your favorites or any cookies saved with passwords (nwhikers.net won't know the new user for example) but this is just a test. On my XP Pro system, from Dell, go to the Control panel and select User Accounts. Create a new account and make it a computer administrator. Log off. Then log in as the new user and go to the sites that give you problems. Remember, you won't have your bookmarks and you'll no longer have your cookies so you may have to log into some of the sites. If that fixes the problem, then I'd look at IE settings to see what has changed from defaults, clear your internet cache and cookies. If it doesn't, you can just delete the new user. Good Luck marta

[marta]

Actually MB has a good idea also. I wondered about that. - marta

[catwoman]

mb- If you'll look 4 posts above your last post, you'll see that I said I installed Adaware.

[catwoman]

Marta, I liked that suggestion! But, unfortunately, it didn't do the trick. Same problems on the new user.

[catwoman]

tk- You did it! Woo hoo! Spybot was the answer! I ran ad-aware a few times and it got rid of a bunch of stuff. But, then I just downloaded Spybot and it found 89 more things and once I had spybot fix those things, the problems vanished! Oh my gosh! I'm so excited! Spybot, spybot, spybot, spybot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Woo hoo! Thanks so much for everyone's help!

[marzsit]

i've never heard of spybot. i'm going to check it out now.

[REJ]

I use both IE6 and Mozilla. The latest version of Mozilla is 1.31 or 1.4 beta. I have problems with IE6 downloading images from the web in any other format other than *.bmp. I first hooked with Mozilla to to solve the image format problem. I got to like Mozilla for other reasons. Especially useful is the popup blocking, cookie and image managers. It also nice to support another browser other than IE6.

[Tom]

Never understood why people go ga ga over Mozilla or Opera. IE loads much faster on my Windoze machine, uses less resources, has less conflicts, and every site I visit renders properly and works. No other browser comes close. Maybe it's just my machine. Pop ups? Well, it took maybe 5 minutes to download and install a pop up blocker. No doubt Microsoft will put one in a future version. Security issues? Sure, but I'll bet there's just as many holes in Mozilla or Opera, just not as many hackers looking to exploit them. Am I worried about it? Nope, figure my odds of getting hit by a truck are greater.

[MCaver]

A firewall/anti-virus combination has protected me well from exploits in any software for years. The Internet is like the wilderness: it's wild and incredible and not necessarily a friendly place. You should have the right gear before you venture in. Anyone with an "always on" connection (DSL, cable modem) should have a firewall, and I'd recommend them for dialup users as well. The days of a warm and friendly Internet are well over.

[marzsit]

my firewall is overkill. i'm on dialup at home, but i connect thru a smoothwall box. i'm amazed. i downloaded spybot, ran it and it found 11 items that ad-aware couldn't find. pretty damn cool